One Small Country

Waffle House - 2 stars
All over the South

None of my friends understand my affection for Waffle House. After all, I am a California foodie at heart who learned how to cook as a graduate student (in the humanities, no less) in Berkeley - and a vegetarian.

If I wanted, I could explain my relationship to Waffle House with a sentimental story. The first time I ever ate at Waffle House was on Thursday, September 13, 2001. I had been trapped in New Orleans with maybe a hundred people from my company, because we were having a user group meeting there. On Wednesday night, a few of us went to the New Orleans airport to see if we could get a flight to San Francisco, because some airports were opening, but New Orleans didn't. So three of us - Sundar, Marcus, and I - rented a big old American car and drove through the night to Dallas, which we expected was more likely to have flights in the morning. We ate breakfast at Waffle House somewhere near the airport around 6 am the next morning. And we got on a United flight home that morning, which made us among the first people to start flying again. (I was also in the air at midnight on New Year's Eve, 2000, but that's another story.)

But the real reason is I just like the food. The summer when I was coming to Louisville every week I would eat there at least once each trip. This morning I had the usual - a double order of hash browns with onions and jalapeno peppers, and two eggs over hard (sometimes I have an egg and cheese sandwich instead of just the eggs). The hash browns are nice and crispy, with the sweetness of the onions and the spice of the peppers, and the eggs are better than you'll find at far more expensive places like Denny's or the Courtyard Marriott lobby (my other choice). The portions are reasonable (not gargantuan), and the prices are so cheap you can order everything you want.

I even woke up half an hour earlier than necessary just so I could go to Waffle House. Those who know me will realize there are few greater recommendations I can give than that.

Now, the people who work at Waffle House are invariably friendly and helpful, but to tell the truth I never thought I had a lot in common with them. Call me provincial, call me a snob, whatever. But I am a liberal Korean-American who studied French intellectual history, of all things, and has lived his whole life on the coasts (and in France, of all places) - and an atheist to boot. I could go on.

But this morning the Waffle House staff were talking about Seinfeld and how much they loved it, and they were true aficionados. They not only knew about Soup Nazi (everyone does), but they were talking about Elaine dancing, and the "on the wagon/off the wagon" episode, and the episode when Kramer and the car salesman see how far they can drive without running out of gas. Seinfeld was my favorite TV show of the 1990s (until I discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the undoubted greatest TV show of all time), and they loved it every bit as much as I did.

We really are one country, like it or not.